the life of a gender fluid trans* person tipping the binary scales

Beyond the Knowing

When picking pronouns, a gender fluid can run into the problem of having to make up their mind on what to do with friends and what to do with strangers. Friends are those people close enough to you that you talk to them regularly and probably deserve to know your identity the most once you’re comfortable with it. Being as that an explanation is more worthwhile to give to a friend than some passing stranger, you can choose to do more with pronouns with friends, such as pronoun hopping.

As discussed, we live in a binary world and most people expect us to be male or female. Which means, though your friends may respect and follow your pronoun changes, a stranger won’t sit and listen to what the bracelet on your wrist means or that the next time they see you you may be a different gender. They want a quick answer to the boy or girl question based off of assumptions and what others tell them subtly, in the clues of miss and mister. So, unfortunately, you have to choose a binary pronoun for everyone else in the world to call you by. What’s even more unfortunate is that it is easier to stick to your given pronouns when you have no plans for surgery, as that is how people see you, despite the misgendering. Deciding to switch pronouns means having to look like that gender or no one will take you seriously.

So what am I doing?

With everyone else in the world I am a she, a miss, the little girl.

And how do I feel about this?

Honestly, I hate being related to feminine stuff. I may not look like it, but I’ve always felt masculine, even my zodiac sign tells me I’m masculine. So when people refer to me as the little girl, I get kind of irritated because that’s not really me. Sure, there is a part of me that is very feminine, but that is a strong femininity and not to be taken as me being some helpless creature, especially when I feel masculine. So, no, there is a large part of me that despised being called she because it’s not me. I feel like others are referring to me as someone else entirely, and someone I don’t really like to boot.

But what am I going to do?

I’m undecided. Right now, while I am writing this post, my mind is not made up in a rather important decision. In all honesty, I hate being called a she, it misgenders me almost entirely, but at the same time I’m scared to move on to being called a ‘he’, mostly because I’m afraid people will either think I’m transsexual or not trans* enough to switch my pronouns. Switching to ‘he’ enlists a tale of being seen as a guy and having to fill that side of the gender spectrum when I might not want to.

What it comes down to is what I feel comfortable as most of the time, masculine or feminine. Obviously, you might have noticed I’m pressing for the masculine side. To switch to the masculine side would probably make me feel a lot better over all, even if I do continue to switch genders, simply because I want little to do with femininity. If I could start my life over as any gender I wanted, I would choose to be a boy nine times out of 10, just because that’s how I feel. But I was born a girl and I can either switch my pronouns to masculinity, a switch that will affect how others see me tremendously, or I’ll bear on being known as something I’m usually not in silence, which doesn’t do.

The conclusion? I feel more like a guy and it would help me in the long run to start having others see me as such, even if I don’t mean to have surgery in the future. In other words, switch my pronouns.

The conflict? It’s not that simple when you factor in other people. Switching pronouns makes me concerned that people won’t accept me and that I might not be viewed as trans* enough to do that because I don’t plan on surgery more than a top-surgery, which is still in debate for me. Then there’s the anxiety of having to say, no, stop, I want to be known as a he.

I’m still deciding. My being says that I should just go and switch to ‘he’ and be done with it, but my common sense tells me there’s much more to be done to have others take me seriously in my pronoun switch because it entails so much more.

What’s my advice for others?

Following the binary way of life, I think an important question to ask yourself before deciding on a pronoun is what gender would I want to be if I could be born again? With some thinking, this question helped me answer who I really felt I was inside. I’m a feminine guy and that’s that. The question makes you think of what binary pronoun you’d rather go by even if you don’t fall on the binary.

Once you know who you are and what pronoun you’d rather be known as, wait until you know you are comfortable with yourself enough to tell not only friends, but also introduce yourself as such a pronoun to strangers. It may take some time, but once you get used to the idea and sure of yourself, you will probably have an easier time. After that you may also want to check into FTM or MTF guides to help you if you need it, as going by another pronoun when you look like the other won’t help in the case of strangers, they won’t take your claims seriously.

Pronouns entail a lot so be prepared to spend a lot of time mulling it over.

Real quick, what are my plans for future posts?

I just wanted to mention really quick that I’m planning on doing posts on how to switch between male and female easily for gender fluids. If you have any ideas/suggestions/experiences on switching between appearances feel free to comment/message me.